Edmund Beecher Wilson
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Edmund Beecher Wilson (1856 - 1939) was an American geneticist and zoologist, born at Geneva, Illinois, and graduated from Yale in 1878. He earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins in 1881. He was lecturer at Williams College in 1883-84 and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1884-85; served as professor of biology at Bryn Mawr College from 1885 to 1891; and at Columbia was adjunct professor of biology (1891-94), professor of invertebrate zoölogy (1894-97), and professor of zoölogy after 1897. Wilson, is credited as America's first cell biologist, in 1898 he used the similarity in embryos to describe phylogenetic relationships, by observing spinal cleavage in molluscs, flatworms and annelids he concluded that the same organs came from the same group of cells, he concluded that all these organisms must have a common ancestor. He also discovered the chromosomal XY sex-determination system in 1905, Nettie Stevens discovered the same in 1905, too. Professor Wilson published many special papers on embryology, and served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1913.
Works
- An Introduction to General Biology (1887), with W. T. Sedgwick
- The Embryology of the Earthworm (1889)
- Amphioxus, and the Mosaic Theory of Development (1893)
- Atlas of Fertilization and Karyokinesis (1895)
- The Cell in Development and Inheritance (1896; second edition, 1915)
- This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.
References
- Al-Awqati, Q. 2002. [Edmund Beecher Wilson: America's First Cell Biologist]. Living Legacies, Columbia University.
- Gilbert, S. F. 2003. [Edmund Beecher Wilson and Frank R. Lillie and the relationship between evolution and development], Developmental Biology, Seventh edition, Sinauer
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